Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Wednesday urged states not to “micromanage” their doses of the coronavirus vaccine, saying it is best to deliver the vaccines as soon as possible, even if they have not been able to vaccinate all health professionals.
“There is no reason why states need to complete, say, vaccinate all health care providers, before opening vaccination to older Americans or other especially vulnerable populations,” Azar told reporters at a news conference.
“If they are using all the vaccine that is allocated, requested, distributed, sent and they are putting it in the arms of health professionals, every bit of it is great,” he added. “But if for some reason their distribution is struggling and they are having vaccine freezers, then you should be opening it up to people 70 and older.”
American officials are trying to speed up the pace of vaccinations after an initial slower-than-expected implementation. The US coronavirus pandemic continues to accelerate, with the country registering at least 219,200 new cases of Covid-19 and at least 2,670 virus-related deaths each day, based on a seven-day average calculated by CNBC using data from the Johns Hopkins University.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided states with an outline that recommends giving priority to healthcare professionals and nursing homes, but states can distribute the vaccine as they see fit.
Azar said Wednesday that states provide some “flexibility” around whoever takes the first few doses “is the best way to get more gun injections” more quickly. “Faster administration can save lives now, which means that we cannot allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good,” he said. “Hope is here in the form of vaccines.”
More than 4.8 million people in the United States received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday at 9 am Eastern time, according to the CDC. The number is a far cry from the federal government’s goal of inoculating 20 million Americans by the end of 2020 and 50 million Americans by the end of this month.
American officials have recognized that the vaccine has been slower to distribute than expected. Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told STAT News on Tuesday that she expects the vaccine’s launch to accelerate “massively” in the coming weeks.
“These are the initial stages of a really complicated task, but one for which we are ready,” she told STAT.
Global health experts said that distributing vaccines to about 331 million Americans in a matter of months could be much more complicated and chaotic than initially thought. In addition to producing sufficient doses, states and territories also need enough needles, syringes and vials to complete vaccinations.
The logistics for obtaining and applying the vaccine are complex, requiring special training. The Pfizer vaccine, for example, requires a storage temperature of minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines cannot be refrozen and must be administered at room temperature and within a few hours, at the risk of spoiling.
Read More: The long journey of the Covid vaccine: how doses go from the factory to your arm
Azar also said the holidays probably had a factor in the slow distribution of vaccines, saying health professionals knew it would be difficult to align millions of people for vaccines by December.
Nearly 20 million doses of the vaccine were delivered to more than 13,000 locations across the country, said General Gustave Perna, who oversees the logistics of President Donald Trump’s vaccine program, Operation Warp Speed, during the same briefing.
The distribution of the vaccine is going “very well,” he said, adding that officials are still working to improve the process. “Our goal is to keep the pace steady so that states have an allocation planning cadence and then the appropriate distribution to the right places, as designated.”
“We are always reevaluating the numbers, ensuring that the distribution is in the right places [and] make sure that execution is taking place so that other decisions are made about allocations, ”he added.